Lofoten hiking 2015 – part 1: Fredvang – Kvalvika – Horseid

There are flights from several Norwegian cities directly to Leknes or Svolvær, but we chose a more adventurous option, which included 4 means of transportation (why would we go for one only!). So we flew from Stavanger to Trondheim, spent a day wandering around, took a night train to Bodø, then ferry to Moskenes and a bus to the start of our trail. I have to say I really liked the ‘day in Trondheim’ idea – it awakened nice memories and gave me a chance to share a little piece of my student life with Gustavo. After 2 days of travel, we finally put our tents in the sun on a beautiful mountain pass near Fredvang.

On day 1 we woke up inside a cloud – great beginning of the trip in a wet tent. ’Luckily’ we were tired after the travel and managed to sleep half of that day through the bad weather. But you just can’t stay in a tent forever, can you? So we decided the rain was not going to melt us and moved out to face it. The interesting thing is that when you look from inside it always seems worse than it really is. Even though soaked all over, we managed to enjoy a trip around to neighbouring cliffs over Sandbotnen.

Waking up on day 2 was not much better than on day 1, but we came all the way there to walk a bit rather than stay in a tent just over Fredvang. 🙂 So we packed the backpacks, collected our wet equipment and started the hike. Since the first day was not very productive, we had a great idea to catch up on the second one (because the days are long, so we can!). We faced a moment of hesitation after a cozy stop for lunch at Selfjordhytta, but somehow managed to leave the temptation to stay there and went ahead.

What makes a difference for the hikes on these latitudes: you are released from the pressure of waking up early in the morning to use daylight and can live on your own clock. However, this may be very deceptive and can encourage you to walk for 15h just because it happened to be sunny…

Old cabins in Fredvang.

Sandbotnen in Fredvang. Even rain didn’t manage to spoil it

Kvalvika beach. We were lucky to get a lower tide, as the passage over water was reachable. Not sure how much harder it is to pass with more water…

Kvalvika beach. View from the other side. And the sky started to open up!

Horseid beach. And the midnight sunHorseid beach.

Using the sunlight and much better weather than the day before, we walked a big piece of trail, reaching the Horseid beach almost at midnight.

After the long day trip, it felt really good to pitch the tent and start the bonfire, while watching midnight sun swinging above the horizon. Now, I have to say that finding wood for fire on a beach close to a swamp is not the easiest task, so making it work felt even better! 🙂

The drawback of that pleasure was getting overexcited with the heat and trying to dry my shoes for too long, too close… At least they didn’t burn completely and I didn’t have to use sandals for the rest of the trip. I know, that pictures don’t show this, but temperature was close to 0 °C.

Day 3 started with amazing weather. Tired after the harsh ‘warm up’ from the day before, we headed towards the ferry port (Kjerkfjorden) to cross over to the next destination: Bunes beach.

Many of the beaches in Lofoten face towards North, which makes them really good locations to enjoy midnight sun. On the other hand, they become the darkest parts of the islands when the winter comes. For the same reason, all the main towns are located on the southern coast.